Encroaching Shadows
by Gigabomb
Summary: Braig x Dilan, Braig x Dilan x Xehanort implied, AU. Xehanort listens when Ansem tells him to stop the darkness experiments, but in the end, all that does is delay the inevitable.


Dilan wasn't surprised to find Braig still scribbling furiously away at his students' exam papers when he got back from his meeting with Radiant Garden's beautification committee. What did surprise him was the absence of Xehanort. The other scientist had never broken himself of the habit of working straight through a project, eschewing all plebian needs in favor of his work, and that hadn't changed since Ansem had passed on the kingship of Radiant Garden to his most brilliant protégé. Even in the six months since their mentor had retired, Xehanort still hadn't come to understand the concept of delegation, or how it was literally impossible to find an end to kingly duties. Which meant that Xehanort never ate. Or slept. Which meant…

Dilan tried to scowl at Braig, but the expression quickly shifted, as it always did, to a resigned sort of frown as Braig looked up long enough from his grading to grin at him. "Hey, Dilan. How'd the meeting go?"

"You drugged his tea again, didn't you."

Braig leaned back in his chair and absently started flexing his fingers. "Duh."

Dilan let himself drop heavily onto the couch which Braig had set up in their office a few weeks after Xehanort's coronation, in the hope that Xehanort would be more likely to go to bed if there was somewhere to sleep within his line of vision. It hadn't worked, of course, but it was still a very comfortable couch. "That isn't a permanent solution."

Braig shrugged and tilted his chair back another few degrees in such a way that anyone else would have long been dumped onto the floor, but the laws of physics had stopped applying to Braig years ago. "Oh, I don't know about that. Even's pretty sure he can come up with a non-addictive sleep potion that won't lose it's potency for a few years at least." The physicist winced as he bent his right forefinger back too far and there was an audible crack. Dilan resisted the urge to sigh. In his own way, Braig was almost as bad as Xehanort. He'd been grading papers since Dilan had left for the meeting, and Dilan didn't see any dining ware that would indicate he had taken a break for dinner.

"Maybe I should start drugging you if you're going to follow Xehanort's example."

Braig just raised an eyebrow and smiled mockingly in a clear dismissal of the implied threat. "Mm hm. Right. Whatever. Now stop playing mother hen and tell me what the pretty, witty and gay wanted this time. Didn't your flunkies just redo the fountain in the town square?"

Dilan kicked off his shoes and put them up on the far end of the couch. Light, was he tired. Maybe Braig and Xehanort weren't the only ones to have overdone it. "Yeah, we finished that up last week. Now the beautification committee wants a new bridge."

Braig snorted and shoved on the heavy oak table with his foot to send his chair skittering over to land heavily next to the head of the couch. "For world's sake, you'd think they'd know the Royal Engineers have better things to do with their time than make the town all shiny. You and Elaeus still haven't started rebuilding the west wall where those shadow things knocked it down yesterday."

"Don't remind me." Dilan closed his eyes as Braig glanced over at the exhaustion in Dilan's voice, then unceremoniously reached out and dug his fingers into Dilan's scalp. "Oh light, keep on doing that and I won't pound you so hard into the ground during our spar this weekend."

Braig snorted. "Thank you ever so much. You are a fount of limitless mercy, Dilan." Still, he didn't stop. "Really though, you should ignore that group and concentrate on the wall. You weren't there when those shadow things started showing up. They were… kind of freaky. Didn't say anything. Didn't look at us like they understood a word we said. And you know my grad student, Leonheart? He got a little too close and one of them took a chunk out of his face. Nothing we did to them even scratched them until Xehanort started whaling on them with that keysword of his to get them to back off. Against something like that, we need all the protection we can get."

Dilan cracked open one eye. "Just because they're alien doesn't mean they're a threat. If they don't understand our language, it was probably just a problem in miscommunication."

"Now you're sounding like Ienzo."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Xehanort appointed him his diplomatic advisor for a reason. Radiant Garden is an important way station among the worlds. You know we cannot afford to have violence as our first resort. If we get a reputation for aggression, no one will trade with us, and the last thing we want right now is a recession at the beginning of Xehanort's reign. He has enough detractors as it is."

Braig's fingers stilled. "Don't go all sensibly pacifistic on me now, Dilan. You didn't _see _the shadows. If those things start coming in numbers, a recession will be the last thing on everyone's mind. Promise me you will finish the wall soon."

Dilan sighed irritably. "Fine."

Abruptly, Braig stood up, sending his chair crashing to the ground. "No, not like that. _Promise me_."

Startled, Dilan pushed himself into a sitting position, his braids twisting uncomfortably around his shoulders in his haste. He hadn't really spoken to Braig in several days, as caught up as he'd been in his work, hadn't known to look for the tightening in Braig's voice and around his eyes that meant that something was wrong. Xehanort, on the other hand, had also seen the shadows, but Xehanort… was himself. Meaning that there wasn't a moment in his day, either awake or the rare moments he was sleeping (or drugged, but lately for Xehanort those moments had been one in the same), that the young monarch wasn't completely occupied with something else.

And something was wrong. Normally, Dilan would have tried to draw Braig out on the subject—he wasn't Even or Xehanort or well, Braig, so by process of elimination wouldn't even place in their little group if there had been a contest to determine who had the least tact—but he was tired and unsettled and didn't give himself time to think. "You're scared of them."

Braig tensed up, ready to deny it. Then his shoulders slumped and he fell back into his chair, which shouldn't have worked but did, because it was Braig, whose chairs righted themselves when no one was looking. "Maybe I am. So? I'd have to be stupid to not be scared of something only a whackjob like Xehanort could kill."

Dilan ran a hand roughly through his hair, yanking out the tangles in impotent frustration. Braig… the only person Dilan knew more fearless than Braig was Xehanort, but that was because Xehanort didn't know what fear meant. Xehanort was the sort of man who couldn't figure out why Dilan had tensed up the first time they'd fallen into bed and Xehanort had reached for his waistband without even having the courtesy to take his tongue out of Dilan's mouth first.

Braig, who had also been there at the time (and almost every other time since), did know what fear meant and tended to laugh when other people exhibited symptoms of it. If Braig was scared…

"I promise I'll get Elaeus to start with me on the wall tomorrow. If we get everyone in on it, shouldn't take more than a week, tops. Alright?"

Braig nodded, his expression relaxing back to its usual caustic good cheer. "Alright." Then he poked Dilan in the chest. "And we'll see who pounds who into the ground at our spar if you don't, got it?"

He was grinning as he said it, so Dilan grinned back. Even if Braig wasn't joking (which he wasn't, because no matter what most outsiders thought, Braig rarely joked), it was fine. No matter what had spooked Braig about the shadows, Dilan knew that an enemy he'd never met could not possibly be as much of a challenge as dealing with a side of Braig he'd thought he'd never see.


End file.
